Okay, bear with me. This is a REALLY long post, and most of it is of "napkin notes" quality. But it's packed with a ton of stuff, so read on if you're interested. The current 10 tier system is woefully inadequate at creating meaningful progression. The first 4 bosses are good, but I don't like the mudflation nor the idea of having separate sector maps when the entire galaxy should be one map. This comprehensive list adds new layers of difficulty to every world, while providing parallel player upgrades that help with exploring that world. In the end, every single world type from T1 to T10 becomes possible with one galaxy, while providing big incentives to take your time and not rush the endgame. Many boss types are mentioned as well, which encourage you to use new ship tools and provide new ones. Are you ready? Here we go. T1: Calm, friendly, temperate planets. Most wildlife is friendly and harmless. Weather is good, natural hazards are few and far between, settlements are sparse and mostly farming communities. Copper is abundant, iron and coal are uncommon, gold+ is nowhere to be found. - Goal: Get your bearings, learn the game. Your ship can not leave the planet yet (start on random unexplored T1 world). Kill the penguin boss to fix your engines and enable system travel. Same idea as vanilla. Ideal biomes: grasslands, forest. T2: Calm, friendly, soft rolling temperate planets. Some wildlife is hostile and has new abilities. Settlements include small villages and simple trade opportunity. Weather is good, natural hazards are few and far between. Iron and coal are common, other ores are rare and only near planet core. No platinum+ in sight. - Goal: Get into your stride and start equipping yourself. Kill the robot boss to enable FTL drive and see the universe. Build stone breaking pickaxe, acquire tech if lucky. Same as vanilla, mostly. Ideal biomes: arid, barren, ocean. T3: Somewhat dangerous planets some minor hazards. Much wildlife is hostile, and new ranged powers are seen. City populations are decently defended and many cities are possible. Poison water, poison tiles, and cold environments might be found. Proper clothing and bandages are recommended. Exotic minibiomes start to show. Titanium shows up as per vanilla, but no diamond+. Ideal biomes: snow, barren, jungle. - Goal: Kill dragon, acquire bone, build obsidian breaking pickaxe. Acquire early game tech powers like pulse jump. Acquire sensor suite, which allows your ship to identify major features on planets. T4: Rough and tough planets filled with steep mountains and deep canyons. Ninja gaiden birds abound. Monsters can spawn and travel in packs. Faction outposts and research centers are moderately armed. Underground traps show up in force. Tundra, desert, snow, jungle. Diamonds show up as rare material, but no aegisalt+. - Goal: kill jelly king, max out pickaxe. Planet features like hazards, richness and population centers can now be seen on the map. Ship upgrades include climate control systems and asteroid killing weapons to suppress asteroid rain. T5: Dungeons! Bandit camps and ancient ruins ahoy. Planets gain serious hazards like tiny asteroids, constant acid rain, frigid cold/sweltering heat, and dungeon lava. Traps may be frequent or fatal like gigantic rocks or laser walls or poison gas. Aegisalt, as per vanilla. - Goal: Defeat ocean type boss using your new climate powers. Upgrade your ship to assist with the many planet hazards you will face in the future. Acquire vacuum breathing. T6: Planets are brutal. The toughest of natural biomes make their appearance and require full clothing, ship assistance and the like. Towns are heavily defended and can call in reinforcements. Uranium shows up, which causes radiation poison(like freezing, but slower to change) if nearby. Boss is a pirate invasion inside your ship (which should be pretty big by now). - Goal: Acquire personal shield and strong travel techs. Personal shield adds 10-25% health, quickly recovers from damage, and saves you from death by a thousand cuts. Ship upgrade protects against being boarded when entering T7+ systems or from attack squads beaming to your position on planet. T7: Very dangerous. Storms include painful hail, lightning strikes, meteors or acid. boiling water and poison winds. Mined blocks will sometimes release poison gas or will shatter, dealing light damage. Low level anomalies show up, which are non moving enemies with effects like lightning or explosions. Cerulium ore causes more anomaly spawns. - Goal: Acquire light radiation defense. Gain pump system to collect dangerous liquids and clear out gasses. Gain ship database to search planets for desired features. T8: Planets just hurt. Storms are very dangerous and potentially lethal, with medium-large asteroids, constant lightning, and the like. Many tiles and ore EXPLODE when mined, shot or damaged. Anomalies have longer reach, can pull the player around or release acid/lava/poison gas that can fill rooms. Radioactive biomes deal damage if lingering around too long. Large facilities and cities are well defended, while isolated merchants sell exotic goods. Plutonium ore creates large amount of radiation, and can CHAIN REACT if damaged. - Goal: Acquire extreme radiation resistance. Gain high level ship powers like modifying wild life populations, attracting NPCs, or directly bombarding planets. Gain ship stealth system for visiting blockaded (T9+) worlds. T9: The sun hates you. The planet hates you. The wildlife hates you. Wildlife is insane, can typically shoot through walls, and does not know fear or suffering. Radiation biomes are everywhere, many blocks will explode or release harmful effects, and anomalies roam about with long range lethality. The only faction facilities are purely military and they probably hate you. Rubium burns to the touch and in a short distance. - Goal: Bombard a magma/lava planet until you hit the core. Awaken and kill core fiend boss. Acquire top tier matter manipulator for ranged mining. Gain ultimate ship powers like suppressing harmful anomalies and teleporting directly to ship from anywhere. T10: Pure insanity. Everything is explosive, poisonous, on fire, electrically charged, or all of the above. Monsters are bullshit creatures that shoot through walls, tear through walls, and do not flinch or feel fear or remorse. Anomalies change gravity, pull matter to the abyss, or teleport you into solid rock. Elite space marines drop from space, travel in packs and bring swift death to the unprepared, raining bullets and lasers from the sky. Solarium burns in a moderate range, is HIGHLY volatile, and is extremely painful to touch. Contains most hazards, if not ALL the hazards. - Goal: Pray. Acquire Solarium, use to craft impervium. Max out your armor(admit it, you would kill for that last 5-10%) and ship. Maxed out ship allows blockading a T4+ world, which means non-friendly ships can not visit, players are beamed to their ships, and are forced to leave. Superior firepower from low level ships (or stealth) can break a blockade.
Mmkay, They said they are going to add litle diferent dificulty system, like T1 with a dificulty 1.54 would be harder than T1 with 1.12. And for me It wouls be a litle boring at T1 I mean, it can be as hard as T10 just at a lowet level, so how I understand, 1.00 dificulty will be as you said T1 and 1.99 would be as you said T10, while both being T1.
Oh, a decimal threat rating! That's kind of like... something, I guess. Anyway, there are a whole bunch of ideas here for how that difficulty might be realized. More clever mobs, more difficult walling tactics, dangerous ore, dangerous blocks, more types of deadly encounter, a new class of environmental hazard, and a whole bunch of upgrades to contend with them. Plus some other things I've surely forgot.
Hello again! I'd like to talk about the dev post a while back about making progression less linear and more like what you would see in a "metroidvania" type of game. So first of all, what is a metroidvania? It's probably best to go figure that out somewhere else. The important factor is how it handles character growth. In addition to a modest increase in numerical power, the hero gains new items and abilities that let them defeat new obstacles. In metroid the high boots let you reach new ledges, in Symphony of the Night the gas cloud let you pass through grates. I tried to make the same sort of options here. There are at least three major types of progression barriers. The first and most important type is the soft barrier. As enemies get harder or hazards increase, the player gains new skills and powers to overcome them. There's no hard limit denying the player access, and if they GITGUD they can definitely manage with low level gear and few supplies. Next up is a single player barrier. This kind of barrier mostly affects single player mode, but players can overcome it by playing with friends. Lastly is the HARD barrier. These obstacles can not be overcome without having the explicit upgrade. For a quick refresher if you don't like reading the OP... Soft: Farming materials(T1-T10), upgrading ship(T1-T10). Extreme temperature resistance (T3-4+), Weather control (T4+), hazard control (T6+), toxic substance/radiation control (T7+), mob/NPC control (T8+), anomaly control(T9+), player control (T10). SP barrier: Leaving the first world(T1), leaving the system(T2), identifying worlds (T3,T4), Planetary search (T7+). HARD barrier: Vaccuum breathing (T5+). Accessing "Kessler syndrome" (random T5+) worlds. Accessing blockaded worlds(random T8+, most T9+). That is of course just a few options possible. For example, let's take a look at this theoretical tech upgrade: That might not look so interesting to start. But it allows for an ultra rare type of ore which is very difficult to harvest. Without the upgrade the ore is a PITA to deal with, but with the upgrade it's not so bad. But wait! If you add in hazards like exploding ore, wall phasing mobs, radiation exposure, anomalies, etc., that time difference now really matters. A slow drilling can end up fatal in a situation where you can't stand still for too long, thus a new style of progression barrier is born.
I read your first post, and I skimmed over the one above this, and I have some things to say. First off, I think this would destroy the main thing of the game. Options. You are funneling things into certain categories and making it be more of a guided game than that of an exploratory-sandbox. Mostly, IMO, this can be a very casual game or a very aggressive game. Casual : You mine, you build, you get through the tiers. You try to avoid creatures, but you know how to dispatch of them easily if you need to. You like exploring, seeing new things, looting chests, ransacking dungeons, and ultimately living the good, nice life. Aggressive : You mine to upgrade your armor and weapons. You build something around the spawn of your home planet and use it mainly for storage. You love confronting creatures, and you love the sound of your sword hitting their soft flesh, or your hammer crushing their scaly exterior. You feel powerful, like nothing can defeat you. You look for challenges, something to kill, or to overcome. To me, it seems like you want to turn this into a Guided Aggressive Game. That is what it seems like to me. You want everything hostile and you want no margin for casual, relaxing, building time. And some things are ridiculous, like creatures shooting through walls, and poison gas, and exploding blocks! That would ruin the game for so many people, probably me included. I appreciate you sharing your ideas, but I think that this just is a niche suggestion.
And yet despite itself, it offers a vast number of opportunities to improve casual play as well. High level exploring creates demand for low level goods, which increases the viability of casual mining and city building, which increases access to high level goods that help explorers. It basically ties all aspects of the game together, which is a far superior outcome to your two separate games. - Ship upgrading is a major focus across nearly all tiers, encouraging mining and crafting of ALL material tiers. - A flatter tech curve allows more planets to be viable at any one time, so low level bases don't get abandoned and more gear types are viable. - Greater hazards and invasion style attacks encourage construction of a home fortress. - Quest line brings players across a wide variety of worlds with a wide variety of goals. - Ore harvesting increases in difficulty with higher levels, creating value for home farming to supply expeditions, or NPC development/trade to avoid the hazards entirely. - More ways to consume low level ore creates value for low level worlds and yet more reasons to use NPC trade. - Peaceful easy worlds still exist and nothing changes about them. Basically everything you described as casual is still present on T1-5 worlds. Not only that, the T1-2 worlds are EASIER because mobs don't have most of their ranged powers and attacks.
One thing you said in that last part shows me that you are an aggressive gamer, not a semi-casual one like I am. So, these worlds are the only worlds that people who want a casual experience can be in? It doesn't mean that we want "easy" worlds, just that we don't want worlds where there is: With what you said about peaceful worlds existing, from T1-T5, that makes it seem like you want over 30% of the Starbound population (there is probably many more than that of casual, or semi-casual, gamers) to only be allowed to go to T5 planets, and never be able to go further until they decide to become an Aggressive gamer.
And challenges are a problem because...? The point of harder worlds is to be more tangibly difficult and to have more obstacles to overcome. Players are free to stock up however they feel like, and to generate cities wherever they please. Nothing in this section is made to be impossible for players. Players with better upgrades can mitigate certain planet hazards, and enter zones that could not be entered before. That is the purpose of a metroidvania progression. Higher end upgrades require higher end materials, while low end materials mitigate lesser hazards in new ways(such as with reducing asteroid storms or building base defenses). Nothing becomes truly obsolete, except perhaps for old character gear. If you do not like an idea, please point out which one poses a problem. But the tone suggests that you would rather not face obstacles at all, which is a real shame. Fortunately CF is going to have a creative mode galaxy for just that.
I think that my "This is for aggresive gaming" stance is evident, and I think I have said enough to spark more ideas. And, with that, I shall take my leave. See ya later, bobucles.
